The Leg Blaster Thread - are we having fun yet?

[shera]

californiagrown - thank you for all that! I am learning.

The trail I'm climbing is just like you're describing. No heart issues hopefully - don't put me on the cart, I'm not dead yet! Do you know what a healthy 60 yr old is like? Are you in your 20s?

I ran sprints this morning, had to hurry up before meetings. Will ride the bike here shortly.

[californiagrown]

100% with you on the static stretches. I've always been told that by coaches from university rugby up to olympic lifting coaches. My dynamic warm ups are no where near as long as they used to be, mainly because I'm working out in the middle of the day and on a time crunch. Put together an old template last night that I'll try and stick with.

All on a 40ft turf

Butt kicks
High knees
Inch worm
Walking lunges
Spiderman with overhead reach
Wall sits
Ankle rolls

Probably add a few more in as I remember them and subtract throughout the week.

Never forget "the worlds greatest stretch". Seriously though, google it, and do it on the last few walking lunges.

[californiagrown]

The trail I'm climbing is just like you're describing. No heart issues hopefully - don't put me on the cart, I'm not dead yet! Do you know what a healthy 60 yr old is like? Are you in your 20s?

Mid 30s. And the folks i was talking about were your age and in much better shape than you. I'm no doctor and know just enough about heart health to know i dont know shit about it- I just know a few older folks who had heart issues and/or checked out redlining on steep MTB climbs, or hikes. Heart health is nothing to mess around with or push so i would just make sure your Doc has done some recent heart checks and gives you the greenlight to push it.

There is a mag from my area who may check in here who had an episode like i described, last year. He may be able to shed more light on the topic, if he wants to.

[shera]

ok

[Stuntmonkey]

Never forget "the worlds greatest stretch". Seriously though, google it, and do it on the last few walking lunges.

Hahah great minds. Soon as I posted that I remembered the movement but couldn't think of what it was called!

[ptavv]

The higher you jump, and softer you land on the squat jumps and lunge jumps, the closer you will be mimicking skiing. The point is to mimic the highforce compressions, and then extensions you experience skiing. If you are just switching feet quickly on the lunge jumps you arent getting much of the eccentric, or concentric loading benefits, and you are basically just doing ladder drills.

I don't think this is right at all… The concentric force that you generate in a jump lunge is during the jumping phase. It's the force to push yourself up and elevate you caused by contracting your quads and glutes and so there's going to be a direct relationship between height and the concentric force generation. The eccentric load is catching your body on the way down while you're falling from whatever height you jumped to.

As to landing "softly" or not -- there's a long running physiology debate about whether time or peak tension matter in any sort of training that hasn't been settled. It's certainly not settled for eccentric loading, but I doubt it matters much whether you land softly and have a lower peak tension but more time or a higher peak tension and shorter time. The area under the curve will be almost identical assuming you return to your start position.

In terms of generating muscular strength and also tendon and ligament stiffness doing sets quickly and unbroken is probably slightly suboptimal, but in terms of generating muscular endurance/work capacity/fatigue resistance (whatever term you want to give to the ability to do sustained, repeated, high intensity but submaximal muscular work) doing the sets quickly, unbroken, and with short rests is probably optimal. Choose your own adventure in how you program it based on that.

Its kinda like burpees. You can do burpees for time or amount and do them as efficiently as possible to maximize the competition benefit (which is what crossfit typically does), or you can do them "correctly" to maximize the training benefit. We arent doing leg blasters in a competition, we are doing them so the training benefit carries-over to skiing 2 months down the road.

Like I said above, I think there's more nuance to how and what someone's goal might be than this implies.

[californiagrown]

I'm not sure how you can argue that catching yourself from a higher jump doesn't result in greater eccentric loading...assuming you're hitting full ROM regardless. Like, you'd be arguing against F=MA.

And landing "softly" is important so you achieve the kind of knee/hip flexion common in skiing... I. E. Full ROM on the lunge/squat jumps... unless you ski stiff legged never bending more than 20 degrees?

[Dantheman]

Careful, you're arguing with an actual physiologist

[shera]

I've had to read these posts more than once, but I think I see the value and I think I'm headed in the right direction.

So here's something else to chew on that I haven't mentioned before. I take my dog out every day for a walk/run/hike at first light. For the past month I've been wearing ankle weights. Staying out of zone 2 mostly, just a slow grind. My army son says there can be some injury problem with ankle weights and I say they help me feel light footed on the ski hill.

Thoughts?

[halliday]

I've had to read these posts more than once, but I think I see the value and I think I'm headed in the right direction.

So here's something else to chew on that I haven't mentioned before. I take my dog out every day for a walk/run/hike at first light. For the past month I've been wearing ankle weights. Staying out of zone 2 mostly, just a slow grind. My army son says there can be some injury problem with ankle weights and I say they help me feel light footed on the ski hill.

Thoughts?

I like ankle weights for things like leg lifts while laying flat on the floor. For walking I don't think there is much benefit to weighing your ankles down maybe some extra weight in a well fitting pack or a waits belt? Put the weight where it should be which is a more natural thing for your body. Just my 2 cents.

[shera]

If anybody else wants to geek out on the female specific stuff, another Huberman episode - Dr. Stacy Sims: Female-Specific Exercise & Nutrition for Health, Performance & Longevity

[californiagrown]

Careful, you're arguing with an actual physiologist

Dropping from a higher height on squat/lunge jumps (because you jumped higher) means you are having to decelerate from a higher speed over the same full ROM. F=MA. it really is that simple.

I'm sure youve heard certified nutritionist argue against the 1st law of thermodynamics too.

[Dantheman]

Can't say I've seen too many real nutritionists argue that. Regardless, physiology is a much "harder" science than nutrition.

I mean, you're not wrong, but for regular people we're probably talking only a few inches difference in jump height so the velocity difference may not be enough to affect actual outcomes. I don't have a dog in this fight, but I'll agree with ptavv that the crux is the goal of the workout, i.e. peak power vs. muscular endurance.

[ptavv]

I didn't do a good job drawing out the conclusion of what I said.

It's true there's more eccentric load if you jump higher, that's not really disputable.

The point I wanted to make was that doing slow deliberate reps with high jumps and soft catches is definitely a way to do leg blasters that will emphasize the strength domain of the exercise. Doing faster reps with a bit less height and emphasis on form will emphasize muscular endurance. Doing lots of back to back sets with minimal / no rest will emphasize fatigue resistance, etc.

I wanted to make the broader point that there isn't a "best" way to structure the workout (whether one looks at the structure of the individual reps, the rep/set scheme, the rest time, whatever)… just ones that will emphasize different things. Aligning your goals with how you do the exercise should be the recommendation (maybe, I'd actually recommend you do it in whatever way you find fulfilling to do in order that you do more of it).

All the optimizations of speed, height, etc pale in comparison to the actual benefits of just getting out there and doing more, so for the most part I think a lot of this is arguing about minor margins. I have found that telling people "form is super important to never lose" or "you should be doing this exercise exactly this way" leads to people just doing less exercise and that's why I keep trying to push back against it.

[Dantheman]

All the optimizations of speed, height, etc pale in comparison to the actual benefits of just getting out there and doing more, so for the most part I think a lot of this is arguing about minor margins. I have found that telling people "form is super important to never lose" or "you should be doing this exercise exactly this way" leads to people just doing less exercise and that's why I keep trying to push back against it.

In fewer words, "You can't out-science hard training."

[shera]

As a tryhard I feel validated.

[heckacali]

I am fairly confident that my couch-mtb-couch-hockey-bar-couch routine is peak me.

[bodywhomper]

Supposedly, I have a fully torn acl, torn mcl, and fucked medial meniscus all in my right knee. My workouts are without exterior brace support. For me, I’ve found that form and alignment when working out has been important or I experience mild swelling/discomfortable later or acute pain/discomfort while performing a workout activity. With leg blaster stuff, I’ve tweaked my form and tightened the distance between my feet doing jumping lunges. But I’m still starting low and jumping high. I liken it more to a tele stance than a far extending lunge. I still feel like I’m getting benefits from the exercise.

[ptavv]

It doesn't seem like it should need to be clearly stated that the principle "form breakdown isn't a big problem" shouldn't be extrapolated to mean "it's fine to do exercises with garbage form when you're lacking ligaments that provide joint stabilization"

[bodywhomper]

Sorry. That’s not what I was trying to say. I was mainly sharing my experience.

One particular exercise, Bulgarian split squat, it’s only a slight tweak of alignment between discomfort and feeling fine. I visualize/focus pressing/weighting focus on the ball of my big toe and my heel.

[shera]

I like ankle weights for things like leg lifts while laying flat on the floor. For walking I don't think there is much benefit to weighing your ankles down maybe some extra weight in a well fitting pack or a waits belt? Put the weight where it should be which is a more natural thing for your body. Just my 2 cents.

I am putting the weight where it should be - where the skis and boots are.

I am fairly confident that my couch-mtb-couch-hockey-bar-couch routine is peak me.

I wish this approach still worked for me, fun while it lasted.

With leg blaster stuff, I’ve tweaked my form and tightened the distance between my feet doing jumping lunges.

This helped me a lot, thanks! It went from impossible to really really hard, hahaha.

And I'm doing strict slow walking lunges during warmup now. I can really feel it.

[pfluffenmeister]

6 minis today.

Was easier than the initial set of 5!

[baron]

I like to do a ton of knee risers or whatever people call them..sometimes w the ankle weights. Builds abdomen strength a bit too.

Having the muscle memory to lift your skis nimbly, feels as important. Good training for the sidestepping up to the easy access ridgelines.

+ sit ups! having strong hips and core really compensate for my lack of quad strength last 2 seasons

[californiagrown]

I like to do a ton of knee risers or whatever people call them..sometimes w the ankle weights. Builds abdomen strength a bit too.

Having the muscle memory to lift your skis nimbly, feels as important. Good training for the sidestepping up to the easy access ridgelines.

+ sit ups! having strong hips and core really compensate for my lack of quad strength last 2 seasons

Training hip flexors and tibialis anterior is the hot new thing in athletic performance and knee health from the little i see on social media. Makes sense, most people (myself included) have way undertrained hip flexors and those are actually the first thing to go usually on the first tour of the year. I've always like hanging leg/knee raises for the ab and hip flexor component, and when no one else was around in the gym i might have even pretended to ski a sweet mogul run complete with hitting jumps and tweaking/shiftying out in the air. Honestly, any kind of ab training where you can get close to gymnast levels of slow, full range movement in complete control is gonna be hugely helpful and make you feel like a super athlete.

[EWG]

if you dispense with dogma, or even properly label it in your mind I don't think this is that counter intuitive

when you get into the range of 90+% a 1RM there's some data that people can have more residual pain with poor form on lifts than better form, but for the most part they just fail the lifts more often

when looking at plyometrics and calisthenics I think it's even more sensible (intuitive? lol) that form breakdown isn't an injury risk… think about basically any activity you're doing that is long and hard. of course your form breaks down and your efficiency/economy get worse at it and it's not disastrous (it'd be a total failure of evolution if normal fatigue made us particularly injury prone); the notion that intentional exercise would be any different strikes me as sort of fanciful. you'll definitely become less efficient as you get fatigued and then drive fatigue accumulation even faster, but most people have the sense / ability to stop the cycle of increasing fatigue -> increasing fatigue accumulation before they totally blow up

I find if I'm not pushing sets/reps to points where my form is imperfect I generally am holding myself back from progress. definitely true with leg blasters. when I push through having to break during the jump lunges on set 4 or 5 and just finish it out I find when I come back next time my gains are much better than if I don't push through it and take the broken sets as a sign I should stop

I'd cosign all of this. The places where form matters are pretty small. A few such situations:

Heavy lifts where bad form will transfer the weight from strong weightbearing muscle groups to weaker stablizing ones. Squats for example. If you are close to a squat max and you stop arching your back you can put enough weight on stabilizing muscles that they spasm or tear out. Which is bad.

Bad form can cause the intended muscles groups to not get worked. Squats again - many middle aged folks don't fire their glutes very well. Squats and other exercises can remedy that, but not if you are using form that bypasses the glutes.

But otherwise, totally agree. When I'm at my speed/skill limit on skis I'm hitting movement patterns that are pretty darn suboptimal. That's sort've part of the deal. Same with any ball sport. And that' variation of movement is actually super healthy for your body. It's one of the reasons that using different weights and motions to train a muscle group works so well - variation is good. Let's just use squats again as an example - back bar, front bar, trap bar, kettlebell, heels elevated, body weight etc - yer gonna do them all slightly differently. Nothing bad about that.

Finally, I totally agree with whoever said that it's way more important to do stuff than to do stuff "right." It's like arguing about bike seat weight when you have a 20 pound gut. So many of the folks that argue about being perfect with exercises are barely training (not here, just generally.)

Just do stuff. Do it a lot. Use all the parts of your body. Lift heavy stuff with both your arms and legs. Do stuff intensely and be uncomfortable doing it and do stuff where you are comfortable. Do some of the stuff very quickly, and do some of the stuff for a long time. Do stuff that makes you unstable. And get good rest both mentally and physically.

You do that and not only will you be in a fantastic place physically, but you will be fitter than 99% of the population.